26 GEOLOGY OF TONOPAH MINING DISTRICT, NEVADA. 



definite prospect of financial benefit from the work, threw them outside into his 

 waste pile. 



On his return journey to Belmont, Butler broke off more samples from the same 

 ledge. In Belmont he went to his friend, T. L. Oddie. a young lawyer and miner, 

 and asked him to have them assayed, promising him a share of the claims should 

 they turn out to be worth anything. Mr. Oddie sent the samples to an assayer 

 in Austin, offering him in turn a share in any possible forthcoming results as 

 compensation for the work. After a considerable delay the Austin assayer 

 reported values of from $50 to $600 per ton in silver and gold. Mr. Butler did 

 not act promptly on this news, and the report coming to the Southern Klondike 

 camp, a party, including the assayer who had thrown out the ore and who had 

 subsequently fished out the rejected specimens from his waste pile and assayed 

 them with surprising results, started out to locate the veins. They wandered 

 around within half a mile of the locality, but. confused by the similarity of the 

 low isolated mountains, they could not find the veins and were compelled to 

 return. Finally, on August 27, 1900, Mr. Butler, accompanied by his wife, drove 

 out from Belmont, and together they located the ledges in due form. 



Mr. Butler gave T. L. Oddie, W. Brougher, and several others interests in 

 the original eight claims which he located, now the property of the Tonopah 

 Mining Company. In doing the location work two tons of ore were sorted out 

 and shipped to Selby's smelting company. This netted about $600, and from that 

 time the property has paid for its own development, a fact of which the locators, 

 who started in with a joint capital of $25, are properly proud. 



Development. In order to prove the value of the property, Mr. Butler gave 

 leases, the lessee to pay 25 per cent royalty on the ore extracted. Some leases 

 were given in December, 1900, and over a hundred more in the spring of 1901. 

 Some of them proved enormously remunerative, and it is estimated that, before the 

 end of 1901, the lessees extracted ore to the value of about $4,000,000. When the 

 leases expired, in January, 1902, the result had been relative^- of so little profit 

 to the owners that no more were given. In the meantime the property had been 

 sold to Philadelphia capitalists and reorganized as the Tonopah Mining Company. 

 This company began development work, shipping only enough ore to pay for the 

 expenses of development and the installment of a proper plant until the present 

 season (1904), when much larger shipments have been made. 



It is a fact worthy of record that the leases given by Mr. Butler were verbal, 

 not a scrap of paper being used, and that even when such arrangements proved 

 relatively unprofitable to the mine, as above stated, the agreements were observed 

 to the letter by Mr. Butler, who, on selling the control of the mine, expressly 



